Nick Karras always used to say that when he went to his grave his Queen St. E. hardware store would still be in the family.

But this week, he is driving the nails into Regal Hardware’s coffin.

Nails you can buy individually — and not by the big-box store blister pack.

“Sure, if somebody wanted just one, I’d say, ‘Shoot me a nickel,’ ” says his nephew, Jimmy Berdousis, 42, who has been managing the store since his uncle, now 76, retired.

Now the doors of Regal Hardware, a Riverside fixture since 1905, are locked. A sign on the door informs customers that there will be a going-out-of-business sale starting Thursday.

Inside, walking the worn wooden floors, Berdousis, his mother Mary, his brother-in-law Anastasios Kouvaris, his aunt Penelope and, of course, Karras himself are dusting off the inventory and marking down merchandise.

But there’s no price on the free advice Berdousis would give customers.

Locals would come in with smartphone photos of plumbing or electrical problems. He would explain what needed to be done, draw diagrams and, after an hour or more of back and forth, he’d be lucky to sell a connector pipe or a length of wire.

When it came to faucets and vanities, customers would head for the big-box stores just to save $15, he says.

“It’s not a matter of the bank telling us we have to liquidate,” Berdousis explains, adding he might make $300 over an entire weekend. “It’s us saying, ‘You know what? We’re just spinning our wheels to pay our expenses. We’re stuck in the store for hours and hours and it’s not just worth it.’ ”

Before Karras bought Regal in 1973, it had only two proprietors. And before them, at least from what explorations in the basement revealed — vials, label-making presses — it was a general store, attached to a drugstore which is now a vintage clothing boutique.

Karras owns both buildings between Boulton Ave. and the train overpass but he is not selling. Regal will be leased out, probably to another designer cocktail or clothing operation.

So much for people running in for a rake and leaf bags or a paint brush.

But the ’hood isn’t just losing a handy place for washers and gaskets. It’s also losing a landmark, one that’s been featured in Hollywood movies such as Hairspray, Cinderella Man and Four Brothers.

No wonder. Despite a new façade, Regal looks like it hasn’t changed since the war years when the surrounding area was solidly working class, a streetcar suburb that was also an industrial hub.

But the tanneries on Eastern Ave. closed down. What was once the Colgate factory became townhouses. The Wrigley Gum plant, lofts. Lever Brothers soap works was severed and one part is now a luxury car dealership, the other slated to become condos. Cranes tower over Carlaw where new developments are shooting up between Dickensian warehouses.

“People used to shop the neighbourhood,” says Berdousis, who began helping out his uncle as a child. “When their paycheques and social assistance came in, there would be lineups. Every store was busy. Then the factories started closing, the neighbourhood became run down and crack became popular.”

“There have been so many ups and downs here,” Karras recalls of the time he bought the store. “People were afraid to come here, the area was so bad. They thought I was nuts.”

Today, formerly rundown Victorian houses go north of $700,000 in bidding wars as young families move in. Martini bars and fancy cheese shops have pushed out the tattoo parlours and pawn shops that dominated just a decade or so ago.

“Now it’s mostly a nighttime neighbourhood,” says Berdousis. “At 2 or 3 in the afternoon, it’s like a ghost town. Starbucks and baby strollers, mostly. But the weekends are busy even though we get mostly convenience sales.

“Maybe it’s because people are carrying $500,000 mortgages. Maybe that’s why they are choosing the big-box stores. They think they’re going to get the best deal but that’s not necessarily true.”

“Nothing last forever,” shrugs Karras, adding he plans to come by and check out the place on a regular basis.

“See there’s a nice bench across the street?” he asks, pointing to the library on the corner. “That’s for me.”

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